


I'll suck the water in my chest

by piggy09



Series: Apples Fall [3]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, I mean the major character death doesn't HAPPEN but you all know it's coming, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-15
Updated: 2014-09-15
Packaged: 2018-02-17 13:59:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2312138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>'Cause our songs remind me of swimming, but I can't swim anymore</i>
</p>
<p>{Jennifer hopes until she doesn't. Set before Episode 1.}</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll suck the water in my chest

**Author's Note:**

> God, remember when I added to this series?
> 
> Title and description from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2pSFd-K4uU). I wrote this in about forty minutes after seeing a Jennifer gifset and getting _punched in the chest_ with emotions.

You’re always happiest in the water. Just kind of a fact. Everything’s simpler there, easier: keep breathing, move forward. It’s just you, and your body, and the water all around you. Keeping you afloat.

There’s a sort of hope to it, if you look for it. Keep breathing. Move forward. Stay afloat.

Kind of a life philosophy, huh? Not that you need one! There’s so much joy in life, if you look for it; it’s not like the pool’s a deep (get it) metaphor for life and existence and stuff. Moving for the sake of moving…sad. You move forward because you want to see what’s next. You move forward because life is so _bright_ , ahead of you – every year there’s more potential, shining bright in trophies on your shelf and the smiles of the kids you meet, year after year. The world has so much good in it. The world is so big, and beautiful!

(…Was. _Was_ big. Was beautiful.)

The future’s always there if you want to grasp it, but: the past lingers. Remember, the world isn’t water! Nothing is washed away, and memory lingers. You remember rising from the water, knowing you’d _earned_ that trophy, with your sweat and the pull of your muscles. You remember the first time you’d kissed Greg, and how his mouth had opened so sweetly under yours, like he’d been waiting, like he’d _known_.

You remember first blood. You remember the way you’d finished your final lap, pulled to a laughing and triumphant stop at the edge of the pool, and coughed up a bit of water that had gotten into your lungs.

You remember how bright it was, in the water. Bright as a future, gleaming red.

Keep breathing. Move forward. Stay afloat. You go to the doctor, take tests, give tests at school, learn to keep brightly-colored packs of Kleenex around. If kids ask, say you’re allergic to bad grades, so they’d better help you out, huh? Pretend when Greg says he doesn’t mind the taste, when he kisses you, that he is telling the truth. Spend more and more time in the pool, until your hair smells permanently of chlorine. Spend more and more time in the pool, tread water—

You can’t swim. Not with your lungs rattling fit to burst, you can’t swim, you can’t—

But you’ll be alright. There is always hope. The water supports you without even thinking about it. The movement of your own body can keep you going forward.

A man named Aldous Leekie approaches you, says: we’ve been studying a disease like this, come in, we’ll help you. And you can help others, he says, other people who may be struggling just like you. And what if they’re not doing as well, what if they need your help? You can be the water, you can keep them afloat. You cough Rorschach blooms into a tissue. You say: _I’ll do it_.

You keep saying that. You pop pills, you watch them pull needle after needle from your body, make jokes about how you’re surprised there isn’t chlorine in your blood. On your good days you tease the nurses, write letters to the kids at school, grade papers.

Don’t think about your bad days. Think about how bright the good days are, and how hopeful.

Think about how Greg holds you up, when you cough. Close your eyes and pretend that he is the water. It’ll be alright! It’ll always be alright. The world out the window of your hospital room is bright and beautiful.

Keep breathing – or try to, through the blood that fills your lungs.

Move forward – or don’t, when your legs give out, when you have your first seizure that sends you thumping to the floor with the world shattering and reforming before your eyes.

You aren’t in the water anymore, girl. Nothing’s going to keep you afloat.

You give up hope like giving blood. You give up hope like the hair that falls out in big ragged clumps from your head. You close your eyes, imagine the pull of an arm through the resistance of water, and force a joke about how you’ll be more aerodynamic this way anyway, huh?

(Don’t tell them this: when you were younger, you dreamed you were a mermaid. Your hair is your one indulgence; you pull it through your fingers, let Greg make lazy braids that fall apart in minutes, twirl it in class, lovingly squeeze out water after a swim.)

(…Was. _Was_ your one indulgence.)

You give up hope like giving blood, and girl oh you aren’t in the water anymore. There is nothing to wash it away. The blood lingers. Aldous Leekie never comes to visit; outside your window, the leaves begin to die. Fall is here. Somewhere in the world out there, the stupid dull and pointless world, a substitute teacher is heading this year’s class.

You wonder how long they’ll be a substitute. You wonder who’s taken your lane at the pool. You lean your weight against Greg, when he brings a bowl for you to cough pus into, but you’ve stopped pretending he was water a long time ago.

You’re sick, but mostly you are sick of _this_. Sick of how your lungs rattle, like bare tree branches outside. Sick of pretending; sick of how the only way to have hope, now, is to pretend it is there when it is not. Sick of the blinking red record button, on your camera, and how you _know_ now you’ll never see these journals from the other side. These are not for you. These are for the scientists who watch you like you are one of your trophies on your shelf instead of a woman who is _dying_. These are for the liars who told you there were people who you could help. These are for the aftermath. Maybe there was never anyone else. Maybe, for you, there is no aftermath.

Maybe, for you, there was never hope. Maybe there was never hope at all.


End file.
